Showing posts with label Howard Gray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Howard Gray. Show all posts

Wednesday, 15 May 2024

Themes For Cryonic Suspension

Liquid Cool by Apollo 440 popped onto my playlist, prompting a discovery on YouTube of the accompanying video for the single from three decades ago. A bit disappointing to be honest (the video, I mean) but a testament to modest budgets and what you can come up with when all you've got is a corridor, a gurney, a chair and a small box of props and costumes.
 
To give the song it's full 'proper' title, Liquid Cool (Theme For Cryonic Suspension) closed side 1 of Apollo 440's debut album Millennium Fever in 1993 and a remix appeared on the B-side of the Rumble EP the same year.

In September 1994, a promo triple pack 12" started doing the rounds, following by the then de rigeur single release across two CDs, all packed with remixes. 
 
I bought the latter shiny discs, containing 9 versions in total, which Additive Sphere has thoughtfully collected as posted as one album-length experience.
 
Probably a bit much as a single listening experience but, mindful of that, there are jumping on points for each of the individual mixes. Deep Forest was very much in vogue at the time so you get three from them (tracks 2, 6 & 8). Of more interest to me at the time were the remixes by The Future Sound Of London and Jah Wobble, the latter dipping into drum 'n' bass waters, whilst the legendary bass floats over the top. 
 
There are a couple of versions by Apollo 440 themselves and rounding out the CD package, two by Rhythm Of Space, the Space Colonization Remix providing nearly 14 minutes of deep techno. 
 
The second is titled Space -320°F Biostatic Ambient Mix Part 1 and is just over eleven minutes of, you guessed it, dub-heavy ambient sounds. As the title suggests, it's a truncated version of the full-length excursion to be found on side 4 of the promo 12" vinyl and runs to twenty four and a half minutes. Ultra evolution? Not half!

Monday, 24 April 2023

This Guitar Kills Metaphor

Astral America by Apollo 440 popped up on my playlist this weekend, a tune I've not heard in a while. I think I'd only seen the video once only release in 1994, so it was over to YouTube to find it.

It's very much a mid-90s beast, full of jump cuts, rotating camera, archive news footage and on-screen soundbite slogans. And so much PVC that the sound of squeaking must have nearly drowned out the music itself.
 
I was an early adopter of Apollo 440 because it featured Noko (aka Norman Fisher-Jones) who had been Howard Devoto's foil in Luxuria a few years previously, a hugely underrated (and sadly commercially unsuccessful) band in my opinion. 
 
Apollo 440 had built up interest with their remixes of Scritti Politti, U2, Banderas, Holly Johnson and EMF and an early run of singles, but without denting the UK charts. Fifth single Astral America was a very clear and direct attempt to do this, with synth parts riffing on West Side Story's America and lyrics ("A God-shaped hole in a God-shaped land", "Blow me away like J.F.K.") that could have been ripped from The Jesus & Mary Chain's songbook. 
 
It worked: Astral America was Apollo 440's first single to crack the UK Top 40 singles chart (for one week, at least) in January 1994, beginning a run of hits throughout the 1990s.
 
The Apollo 440 line-up for this song and video is Noko, Howard Gray, Trevor Gray plus double drums from Simon Hoare and Cliff Hewitt. What a blast.